The Secretary of State for the Environment, Federico Ramos, today presented the new platform for the exchange of information on impacts, vulnerability and adaptation to climate change AdapteCCa.es, an initiative that is part of the National Plan for Adaptation to Climate Change (PNACC).

The AdapteCCa.es platform, promoted by the Biodiversity Foundation and the Spanish Office for Climate Change, aims to facilitate the coordination and transfer of information, knowledge and experiences in the field between the different administrations, as well as between the scientific and technical community, planners, managers – both public and private – and other agents, enabling a multidirectional communication channel between them.

Ramos stressed that it comes at a “key moment” in the field of adaptation to climate change, since, on the one hand, at the community level, the European Adaptation Strategy has just been approved, which seeks to facilitate cooperation between Member States and integrate adaptation to climate change into common policies, while strengthening the knowledge base on the impacts and vulnerability to climate change in Europe.

At the national level, the Third Work Programme of the PNACC is being drawn up, which will be approved at the end of 2013, and which will be fully consistent with the European Adaptation Strategy and in whose development the AdapteCCa platform will play a “fundamental role”, according to Ramos.

This platform offers experts who are active in this field the possibility of contributing their work, which is incorporated according to a structure ordered by sectors, geographical areas, thematic areas and type of document, while providing a powerful search engine that allows the user to select the information of interest.

In addition, through the www.adaptecca.es website, access to a virtual workspace is given to those groups of users who plan to develop specific work on the assessment of impacts, vulnerability and adaptation to climate change.